


Litany

by BurgerBurgerBurger



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cliffhangers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Hurt/Comfort, Lilshotgun, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Touch-Starved, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurgerBurgerBurger/pseuds/BurgerBurgerBurger
Summary: Shannon would never take a weak woman to bed. Mary is special- she can pull apart a church, down to its foundation, and rebuild it better than before, stronger and more beautiful and holier because her hands blessed the stonework- and as Lilith stares back at her with frightened, craven eyes, she knows exactly why Mary is afforded so many exceptions and broken molds: she deserves it.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Shotgun Mary/Shannon Masters, Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary (Warrior Nun), Sister Lilith/Shotgun Mary/Shannon Masters
Comments: 36
Kudos: 50





	Litany

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vice_vereesa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vice_vereesa/gifts).



> This fic stays true to Season 1 canon, and doesn't extend beyond the cliffhanger ending! Please don't read this if you haven't finished S1 of Warrior Nun because the spoilers are out in full force. This is largely a pre-relationship Lilith/Mary story and Sister Lilith character study. Now you know exactly what kind of suffering you're in for. It's all yearning and Catholic guilt and zero resolution, so this is your warning that they don't have a happy ending yet. 
> 
> Special thanks to @vice_vereesa for putting this demon in my head and forcing me to exorcise it myself. Bless you, Sister.
> 
> Alternate title: Lilith is gay for every woman she has ever met, but is especially gay for Mary.
> 
> TW: minor internalized homophobia, suicide ideation, lots of Catholic guilt, violence, horny nuns, the author's obvious thirst for Toya Turner, actually: explicit sapphic simping for all these women SORRY

+++

> "I take it back.
> 
> The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths.
> 
> I take them back.
> 
> Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
> 
> Crossed out.
> 
> Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something underneath the floorboards.
> 
> Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
> 
> reconstructed.
> 
> Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
> 
> forgiven,
> 
> even though we didn't deserve it."
> 
> -Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out"

+++

There are precious few reasons for Lilith to be jealous of the women around her- she is the blessed seventh of a line of Halo-Bearers, born and bred over three centuries for one singular, sacred task, destined to carry out greatness in the name of God and all His angels- but Mary and her watchful eyes seem to inspire rage in her constantly.

She surrounds Lilith like a breeze on the coast, tangling her hair and kicking up sand, annoying and persistent, and always watching, as if she expects Lilith to snap at her like a half-trained dog. She wasn't always that way, not so cautious and protective and suspicious, not until Shannon received the Halo. 

Shannon always got what Lilith wanted.

+++

The five of them train together often. None of the other Sisters can match their skill, and Mother Superion says they shouldn't dull their own blades to sharpen inferior steel.

Shannon leads them in combat skills, two hours every day: stretching, hand-to-hand, weapons. They study tactics afterwards, usually with Mother Superion, who nods here and there when questions are raised, but otherwise leans on her cane and watches in silence as they work. Lilith always feels a swell of pride when she receives a nod.

Beatrice is entirely too capable for her own good, a strange, dark academic with fast hands and a faster brain, and a subtle melancholy that follows her around like a stormcloud. But for all her sorrows, Beatrice is generous with her affection, and Lilith allows her embraces from time to time.

Camila is a fragile creature, as much as any sister of the Order of the Cruciform Sword could be called fragile, but Lilith can respect her mercurial movements and unparalleled accuracy. She has never told her, but she likes it when Camila sings for them, resolute in her joy.

Mary only ever spars with Shannon, and flits along the outside of the ring when the real Sisters coordinate their assaults. Father Vincent often encourages her to join them, but she always refuses until Shannon holds out her hand and pulls her inside, and a tingling anger dances on the back of Lilith's skull at how much time they waste on Mary's cat-and-mouse game when she isn't even part of the Order.

Shannon prickles at the base of her neck too, though she hardly notices Lilith at all anymore. Her hawkish eyes are always distracted and her knuckles are ghostly white from gripping the Sword; the Halo rests heavy between her shoulder blades like Atlas carrying the weight of the world. But when Mary comes around, one hand on Shannon's waist, her posture relaxes into something untroubled and comfortable, like one meaningless gesture makes the burden easier to carry.

Lilith scowls, furiously bombarding the wooden training dummy with her fists. Mother Superion lets them behave that way. Everyone at the Cat's Cradle has seen them kiss, and no one speaks a word of it. Who would dare reprimand the Halo-Bearer for her proclivities, no matter how base?

Lilith isn't allowed to have that; she isn't the Halo-Bearer. And, even if she was, Shannon and Mary didn't want her in the first place.

+++

When she was thirteen, her parents took her to the opera and the theater, one of the rare occasions she was allowed in the public forum where other children might be. They brought her to see a production of _Julius Caesar_ in Bois de Boulogne one summer when they traveled through France, out in the open air where people mingled about on the green grass of the 16th arrondissement park. Girls wore flowery dresses and stained their wine glasses with bright lipstick, and she wondered what it all tasted like, the lipstick and the wine and their lips.

The sun set around them in the second act, and she remembered how her hatred of Brutus' disloyalty slowly slipped away, line after line, until all her disgust warped into shameful, pathetic pity. She felt sorry for the man who wanted nothing more than to protect Rome from a tyrant, to protect those who counted on his strength. She wept for Brutus, who was a pawn in someone grander's plan, who struggled against the confines of fate though he longed for his own free will, who history will always number among the traitors.

Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by a mob of his trusted friends, but " _Et tu, Brute?_ " is carved in stone.

"Wipe your eyes," her father snapped beside her, elegant in his checkered Armani suit. "You're embarrassing us." She blinked away her tears and sat up straight in her wooden chair, emotionless and rigid like the machine of her training demanded, eyes fixed on the stage.

She was relieved when Brutus died at the end, run through on his own sword. At least he got to choose that for himself.

+++

Mother Superion maintains her propriety and distance from the nuns in the Cat's Cradle- she isn't trying to make friends of her underlings like the simpering Father Vincent- but Lilith thinks that, maybe, she has a soft spot for her. 

Every six weeks, like clockwork, Mother Superion knocks on her door to cut her hair. She carries a bowl and towel and simple silver scissors, and gives Lilith no choice in the matter. It's not unheard of: the other Sisters cut each other's hair, Beatrice even cuts Father Vincent's, but Lilith hasn't heard of Mother Superion offering for anyone except her, perhaps to reward her for her tenacity and commitment to the Order's mission. No one works harder than Lilith. 

Lilith pushes down the other possibility. The condolences, the _pity_ for her after not being chosen as Halo-Bearer would be an indignity too great to bear.

Mother Superion's fingers massage shampoo into Lilith's scalp, and she tries not to shiver at the contact. She isn't often touched, except by bruises and splintering wood during combat skills, and the warmth of soft hands in her hair is overwhelming. Even Beatrice only touches her in passing, and not so thoroughly.

"What are you reading now, Lilith?"

"The _Divine Comedy_ , Mother," she says, trying hard to control her breathing. She thickly adds, "Beatrice recommended it."

"In the original Italian, I hope," she says, submerging Lilith's hair into the warm water of the bowl, suds rippling up to the surface.

"Of course, Mother."

"Very good."

Lilith smiles bashfully. She does not add that she read Dante's _Inferno_ six years ago, in English, though she tried bungling her way through the original Italian for all of two stanzas before she grew too frustrated to continue. She'd only tried it again because Beatrice flaunted the fact that the original was so much more poetic, and her Italian was much improved after joining the OCS. And Mother Superion favors Italian, her native tongue.

"Such lovely hair you have," Mother Superion murmurs. Her breath is tinged with mint, perhaps from her morning tea, and Lilith swallows the lump in her throat. She never receives compliments like this and the skin on the base of her neck tingles with the attention, but Mother Superion continues, unabashed by the effect she has on her, "No one else uses those scissors, you know. I make sure of it. We must all have our little ceremonials, and this one is yours."

Heat fills her stomach, confused and pleased and _special_ , but she keeps her eyes closed when she quietly says, "Thank you, Mother."

"Of course," she replies, reaching for a towel to slip around Lilith's shoulders. "Now sit up and let's put them to use."

+++

They break rules in the Order of the Cruciform Sword. Some part of Lilith thinks this is the ultimate sacrifice, and the reason they answer a higher calling. They sin in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, to protect the Halo from non-believers, from the followers of the morning star and all his fallen angels. Lilith breaks God's own commandments, the fifth especially, in the name of upholding his Church.

_Thou shalt not kill._

There is no question to its meaning. She knows the book of Deuteronomy back to front; she even read it in Hebrew. Still, she killed two men today, enemies of the Church, adversaries of the Halo. She shot them both, two bullets for two souls, nothing wasteful. Lilith has killed with a gun and a sword and once with a spear, but she thinks a knife would be harder. Plunging short metal into flesh up to its hilt, the pooling blood so close to her own skin, so frightening and intimate and bright. She isn't certain that she could, not like Brutus did. The rifles and katanas offer her distance, and distance offers her clarity.

But her body buzzes with excitement after the mission, where she hoisted little Camila back up to her feet and held her tight against her own body to keep her from stumbling, just like she'd seen Mary and Shannon do for each other countless times. She had to know how it felt, and Camila is soft and grateful and receptive to being held for a moment, but still Lilith's attention wanders.

Last spring she found a Scottish thistle in the middle of their flower garden, a spiky, purple anomaly growing completely alone in a land most foreign, so she pulled it up at once- it was an invasive species, after all, and would destroy the rest of their garden- and gave it to Camila, who cupped it in her hands like a baby bird, eyes shining with tears. She was always talking about the Highlands and Lochs, and she wrapped her arms around Lilith in a grateful hug until Lilith unlatched herself with a frown.

Camila looks like that again, but closer now, warm in her arms. "Thank you," she exhales into her chest, fingers clinging to her robes, but Lilith ignores her.

She watches as Mary checks Shannon's face for cuts and their heads tilt and soft lips brush for a moment, content with what she found. But Mary's eyes open and catch Lilith's gaze for an instant before she releases her lover. She must recognize the heresy on her face, etched into her drawn mouth and darkened, ravenous eyes, and Mary looks back at her with gentle curiosity, turning Shannon to observe Lilith's sacrilege.

Her heart races and she releases Camila at once, wordlessly stalking away.

The ninth commandment torments her in quiet moments of reflection too, like this one in her unmade bed. She has bathed away the grime of battle and her black hair is wet against her pillow, dripping rivulets down her neck.

_Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife._

This envy bombards her, though she has never confessed it properly, not to her peers and certainly not to Father Vincent. She's uncertain she could put her thoughts to any sensible form, and technically there are no neighbors and no wives and she isn't sure where the boundary would be drawn between Mary and Shannon in the first place, as they have both made their way into her sordid fantasies on more than one occasion, sometimes together. 

Lilith is a virgin who has never been kissed, never been touched. She wonders if they know, or if they would mock and dismiss her for it, for the chastity that should be praised by the Church. She kept herself intact, for God or some husband she never wanted, because she never found another woman to kiss, who could break apart the cage around her body and shatter her to pieces the way she craved.

The guilt wells up heavy as a wooden cross but she is too weak to stop herself, and if her body is a temple then should she not indulge? Only a cruel god would make something that felt so good a sin. Only a cruel god would deny her the pleasure she desires.

When she is alone in her bed and her hands wander as freely as her mind, Lilith finds that she covets more deeply than she ever imagined.

If it is acceptable to break one commandment for the sake of the Lord, then surely it is acceptable to break another, to place Mary and Shannon on a sacred altar in her mind, to recognize their grace and offer them supplication. The wicked worship of her daydream is all she has to offer, and she feels far closer to their divinity than God's.

She covets with curled fingers and panting breaths, and the memory of their eyes upon her own, warm as sunlight.

+++

When Shannon screams in agony, Lilith does not feel the thrill of anticipation that Mary claims she must. She feels only terror, cold and numb, like Treachery, the Ninth Circle of Hell, and its frozen lake, Cocytus. She feels like she is drowning in the icy depths like Cain and Judas Iscariot and poor, _poor_ Brutus, and like Dante Alighieri was right all along.

Her fingers tingle against the trigger of her rifle when she sees Shannon's sharp face spattered with blood, and the unnatural blue glow of Divinium shrapnel mocking them beneath her armor, beneath her pale skin. She cannot help her voyeuristic, morbid fascination with Mary's lips beside Shannon's, the color draining out of her.

But she is trained for this, and the machine inside her whirs, a beastly, inhuman thing, and she hears herself ask, "How bad is it?"

"Let her work, Lilith," Mary says, dismissing her as usual. It hurts. It stings like static shock all across her skin that, even now, with Shannon bleeding out before them, Mary thinks so little of her; she doesn't know how much she cares about Shannon.

No one knows her. She doesn't know herself. She wanted more than to take Shannon's place.

"You think I want this? It's not up to us. There's a protocol," she hisses. Softly, because even the machine inside of her understands the magnitude of these words, she says, "Mary, you know what needs to happen."

The venomous honesty crosses Mary like a shadow or a stain, and all Lilith can do is apologize to Shannon's beautiful, fading face before she runs away to buy them time. But it's not enough, and it's not in any way that matters. 

"You're ready," Shannon tells her. "We both know it."

Lilith nods, stilted and disbelieving, her faith long since drawn out of her body. She is watching Shannon die. She is losing her wide smiles and the tired tinge of her voice after battle, and the way she can engulf her whole team and protect them at her own expense, and Lilith is slipping deeper and deeper into that icy, hellish lake, going blind with fear and regret.

Mary is weeping and holding Shannon, and the silver of her pendant brushes against her knuckles, and Lilith has to tear her eyes away, she cannot bear to cry and embarrass them all, she cannot survive that shame on top of everything else. The litany repeats.

"In this life, or the next," Mary whispers, her lips warm beside Shannon's. Cold metal presses to her lover's spine.

Lilith can smell the blood, the burning flesh, and see the bright orange glow as the Halo is torn from her broken body, but she cannot hear a sound except the awe of Mary's voice as she breathes, "It's beautiful, Shannon."

And, as Shannon is permanently crossed from the list of Halo-Bearers, the world erupts around them.

+++

Camila plays the piano for them, and a song bubbles up from her throat, clear and sonorous, and Lilith thinks that it is a very good tribute to Shannon. She is wholly unprepared for her loss, dead and chilled, and ashamed for it. This is the eventuality she trained her whole life for, and her resolve flies away like spooked starlings in the courtyard.

Beatrice holds Mary in her delicate way, a different way than Shannon used to touch her, and rests her head on her shoulder. Lilith craves that contact- she wants to help Mary too- so she slips in shyly on Beatrice's other side, the third cross on Golgotha. She shares a short glance with Mary that makes her look away at once, retreating and praying that Beatrice couldn't feel the trembling response of her body.

She has no gift for Shannon except an olive branch for Mary, and the comfort by proxy she gives through Beatrice, who is full enough of love and goodness to carry them both. Lilith's lips are tight and mournful as Camila's song washes over her. She cannot give Mary what she needs.

Caesar is dead, and the dark thing that looms in the basement of her heart is no substitute for Shannon.

+++

When she was eight she broke her big toe while she was training with her polearm instructor. Her own weapon had fallen just right, a clumsy slip from her grasp, the butt of it smashing down on her foot, fracturing the bone.

Her small body locked up in shock and suffering, the pain radiating through her foot too much for her brain to process. Her breath caught in her chest and she stopped moving completely, eyes wide as saucers, and it wasn't until her tutor asked if she was well that she could even blink. The pain overpowered her, hot and prickling, and she fell flat on her training mat, muscles tense and quivering.

This morning, in front of God and all her Sisters, she felt the exact same sense of blazing stasis when Mary sarcastically called her Baby Girl.

She dimly thought, as she blinked at the back of Mary's head, that she would rather break her own toe again.

+++

They spend an eternity investigating and searching for answers for what happened to Shannon, but no one responds to their prayers. One night Mary comes home with bloody knuckles and flint in her eyes, and Lilith watches her pace in the cathedral, agitated and helpless. She can knows she's done something to someone, something violent and thrilling, and it pleases Lilith that Mary would unearth ugly things in her own heart to avenge Shannon.

She's committed to justice too, to punishing the sinners responsible for wiping Shannon's smile from the face of the earth, for wiping Mary's too. Though they have not spoken since Mary spat her accusations about Lilith and her legacy, the same phrases repeated again and again, as if by chanting them she grows more certain of her distaste, and her rightness.

Shannon is dead, and Mary needs something to hurt. But Lilith snaps back and defends herself, how could she not defend herself when it is all she has ever been trained to do? Mary couldn't possibly understand the way her words gut her, shredding at what little self-confidence she has managed to build since being denied the Halo twice over, and worse, far worse, is the way Mary claims Lilith only cares about herself when she has sacrificed everything she has ever wanted.

_I dream of Shannon,_ the ghost of words form in her mouth _. I dream of you. When I am alone, you are all I ever think about._

She will never say it; she can't. It would embarrass everyone, herself most of all, and Mary hates her. Mary calls her selfish, conniving. Maybe Mary is right. Maybe Mary _should_ feel hate in return, scalding and purifying.

And when Beatrice defends her not-quite-Sister, all Lilith can do is spew more spite and vitriol. Because Mary is the special little lamb of the Order, but Lilith is the one destined for the slaughter. She was born for the altar, and that is something Mary would never understand. Lilith has no freedom, no acceptance, no concept of what she even wants anymore, a cog in the machine meant to turn and turn and never question where they're going.

Mary doesn't fit into the Order's puzzle as neatly as the rest of them and, after some reflection, Lilith wonders if this is why Shannon loved her so much. 

She wonders if Caesar and Mark Antony even liked Brutus, or if they ever held him at arm's-length because that creeping suspicion of future betrayal writhed beneath their skin. She wonders if they tolerated him because of what he represented, because of the promise he held, and the power he possessed, or if they ever loved him in the first place. She wonders if Brutus loved himself.

But Shakespeare grasped the truth of it, pessimistic and raw: Caesar was the titular character, Caesar is the protagonist, Caesar is the hero. Brutus can keep his monologues and scenes with Cassius, his knife and all the weeping and the blood of a better man on his hands, and he still won't win, neither gold, nor silver.

Brutus doesn't even deserve a place on the podium.

+++

Ava, as a name, is too close to Eve for Lilith's taste. She thinks this is because she has issues with her own name, and really, truly, what were her parents thinking naming their daughter _Lilith_? Adam's first wife, his equal, shaped from the same clay, then demonized and rejected for the rest of her existence. The shadow woman without a kingdom, full of demons, an abode for jackals and the beasts of the desert, mother of monsters.

Ava is a dreadful girl and a worse Halo-Bearer. She mocks and derides their sacred order, and doesn't have the decency to attempt to learn their rites and ways. She ignores Mother Superion and swears in their house of worship and is such a pretty, flirtatious thing that everyone else defends her, Camila and Beatrice and Mary included.

Even Mother Superion wouldn't let Lilith strike her down. Though that flash of embarrassment was something of a treat for Lilith: seeing her prioress' effortless power, a silent lightning strike, her scarred face unmoved by Lilith's momentum. Lilith panted in shame and excitement: so few had seen her skill, to witness even a residual shred of that unmatched vigor was nothing short of a gift.

But still, Ava doesn't appreciate the Halo the way she should. Lilith thinks if they gave her a chance the way she was promised, she would hold it dearer than she holds her own life. But they never will. Perhaps her parents were right about her name: Ava took what belonged to Lilith, whether or not she meant to.

She should've bashed her harder in the ribs, especially the one she stole from Adam.

+++

She likes to think she taught Ava a valuable lesson about teamwork and bravery that morning, but it's difficult to imagine the coward internalizing anything noble with her foot lodged in a wall and Mother Superion's disappointed eyes bearing down upon her.

But at least she was trapped in the drywall. There is some Divine Providence after all.

Lilith sighs, and takes her hair into one hand, resting it on the shoulder of her white nightgown. She glides through the nave, her bare feet quiet on the tiles, slow and purposeless. She often wanders to the chapel in the night, ostensibly to pray and soothe her anxious mind, but more frequently to daydream and stare blankly at the murals until the candles have melted down to nothing.

A movement in the north aisle catches her eye, a familiar silhouette in the moonlight. Mary stands alone before the portrait of the first Warrior Nun, Areala, accepting the blessing of Adriel, the radiant Halo looming above them. Mary's strong arms are limp by her sides, uncovered for once, no long grey coat in sight. She wears only the black vest and pants of her mission gear, and carries no shotguns or ammunition in the church.

She owns no habit or veil. Mary lives and eats and trains with them, but there is a line between her and the Sisters, one even clearer than the Evangelical counsels. Mary has made no vows to raise herself to the consecrated life, no devotionals to a higher calling. She cannot know the sacred bond that binds Lilith, the fervor and zealotry like rough rope against her naked skin, the certainty that she serves a worthy goal.

Lilith tilts her head, tacitly correcting herself. She cannot fathom what vows Mary made to Shannon in the quiet of their bed.

She watches Mary for a long time, too long, admiring the graceful lines of her body and the steadiness of her breath. She likes the mosaic of the bare skin of her arms: blue from the stained glass on the left, orange from the flickering candles on the right. From here she can follow the curve of her neck to the dip of her collarbone, and just make out how her long eyelashes are slightly lowered, solemnly staring up at the portrait, as if in worship-

"You don't have to hide, Lilith," Mary says without turning around. "I saw you come in."

Lilith inhales, flushing hotly, and her lips twist angrily as she tugs at her hair. "I'm not hiding," she sharply replies, "I'd just hate to interrupt you and all your friends."

Mary huffs, not quite a laugh, but turns to face her. The moonlight paints her half-cobalt, blanketing her dark braids and reflecting off of her eyes. She quietly asks, "Couldn't sleep?"

"No, I couldn't," Lilith replies, though she isn't sure why she bothers.

"Me either."

She slowly approaches Mary and crosses her arms, feeling incredibly underdressed in only her nightgown. She isn't used to seeing others wandering the Cat's Cradle so late at night, except for Camila making hot cocoa in the kitchen after Advent, in the Christmas season. Camila always gets more cocoa as an Epiphany gift, and acts surprised every year when she opens it, clapping together her mittened hands. The five of them share it during the Chalking of the Doors, their fingers spotted with the dust of brown chocolate and white chalk.

But Shannon always bought Camila's cocoa. Lilith's eyes lower to the foot of the iron brazier beside the pew. Camila would receive no gifts this year. She steps a little closer to Mary, as close as they were after Shannon's funeral, but with no Beatrice to glue them together this time.

"She doesn't look like a happy person," says Mary. Her gaze is fixed on the mural, on Areala with her head bowed.

Even with Lilith standing before her in the moonlight, her face as vulnerable and feather-soft as she can manage, Mary isn't thinking of her. Dead women occupy more space in her mind.

"What does that matter?" Lilith bites out. The words are harsh and uglier than she intended, but the sentiment is true. She was not raised to be a gentle woman, and cannot hide that from anyone, least of all Mary. "She had a mission from God himself."

Mary meets her eyes for only a moment, her voice so low and thoughtful it barely carries over the polished marble of the foyer. She murmurs, "Sounds like a pretty shitty deal to me."

She walks away from Lilith without another word, retiring to her empty bedroom.

It isn't until much later, after her death, that she thinks again of Shannon's broken body and Mother Superion's hidden scars and the abject terror of Ava's angelic face when Lilith held the Sword to her throat, and she considers that Mary was right: it is a pretty shitty deal. 

+++

"You don't have to be so spiteful," Beatrice snipes into her tea. In a different world they could have been friends. They have a lot in common.

The spacious cafeteria empties out by mid-afternoon but they both take their lunches late, occasionally together. Today Lilith feels like this is a mistake, as Beatrice's eyebrows are raised to signify that she is not just unhappy with her recent behavior, but she is also on a soapbox about it. Lilith glares at her as she chews the last of her farfalle and grilled vegetables, now deeply committed to not saying a word in reply. She has better things to do than be lectured by her peers, particularly one so blinded by Ava Silva's wide smile and big, brown eyes.

Beatrice carefully watches her over the rim of her porcelain cup, the one with turtles on it that Lilith got for her last Christmas, poorly wrapped in cheesy newspaper comics because she had no good paper. They sat by the fireplace together reading each and every comic on the page, passing the newspaper back and forth until the ink smudged in their hands. She continues, "Ava didn't ask for any of this."

Lilith swallows her last bite and sets her fork on the plastic tray. When she was young, she enjoyed a small hardback edition of Aesop's Fables, the one her father threw away on her twelfth birthday because she wasn't allowed to read baby books anymore, and she had memorized all her favorite stories, perhaps not yet aware that many were cautionary tales. There was one, _The Scorpion and the Frog_ , that always felt out of place to her, meaningless and malicious, but it never strayed far from her thoughts.

It goes like this: once upon a time there was a frog and a scorpion who met on a muddy riverbank, both looking wistfully to the other side. The scorpion asked the frog for safe passage across the river, a simple ride on his back, but the frog, suspicious, asked, "How do I know you won't sting me?"

"Ah," the scorpion reassured him, "because if I sting you, I will surely die too."

The frog, content, allowed the scorpion to climb onto his back, and they set out across the river together. But in the deepest depths of their crossing, the frog felt a pinprick on his back and knew at once that he had been betrayed.

"Why?" asked the frog, paralysis locking his powerful legs in the current. "Why would you do this?"

"I cannot help it," said the scorpion, sinking just the same. "It is in my nature."

Beatrice stares back at her, scrutinizing her silence, her lips tightening at the corners. She chides, "You're making a choice to behave this way-"

"No," Lilith snarls, and her anger flares up, poisonous and rotten; angry with herself for speaking, angry with Beatrice for forcing her hand, angry with her father for destroying her storybook. It took her years to understand that parable, to realize that the scorpion was fated for that river the moment he was born, drowned by his own self-sabotaging psyche. The scorpion could not choose his nature- God made him that way- and the frog was a fool for thinking otherwise. They both deserved to die.

"I'm really not."

She rises in a rush, her silverware clattering, and ignores Beatrice's plaintive cries behind her. Lilith skips lunch for a week after that.

+++

Mother Superion brushes out Lilith's wet hair with practiced ease, as capable with a comb or pair of scissors as she is with a sword. They say no one could hope to match her in the sparring ring, not even Beatrice. Lilith's eyes are closed, relaxing in her chair, the repetitive motion like a meditation.

"I am going away to Rome," Mother Superion says, setting down the comb. "Mary will cut your hair while I am gone."

"What?" Lilith starts and her eyes fling open, voice catching in her throat. "Why Mary?"

She turns in her chair, her face laced with fear as she looks up at her. She cannot begin to process Mother Superion leaving the Cat's Cradle- she rarely ever ventures beyond the gates- and the thought of being without her presence makes Lilith feel lost and unsteady.

Mother Superion turns her shoulders gently, facing her forward in the mirror again. "She used to cut Shannon's hair and was very meticulous. You will appreciate her attention to detail."

The idea of Mary touching her with the same tenderness lights a terrified, vertigo-inducing blaze in her stomach. Lilith closes her eyes and sneers, "She wasn't very meticulous when she let Shannon die."

Mother Superion's hands slide away from her body, displeased. She doesn't need to speak it for Lilith to hear her own mistake amplified, to know she deserves to be corrected. Lilith continues, desperate to rectify the error of her words, "I'm sorry, Mother. That was uncharitable and untrue. But Camila can do it. I'll ask her."

"Is there a reason you don't want Mary to cut your hair?" 

"No," she lies. "I just think she will not be as _meticulous_ with me as she was with Shannon."

They all knew about Shannon and Mary, though no one gave a name to it and no one called it sinful. Mother Superion resumes her work, combing out her black hair, starting with the knots the bottom. The teeth of it slide against Lilith's back, a gentle scratch through the towel. 

"So the issue is your vanity, Sister?"

"No," she grumbles. Her lips flatten into a tight line. "She isn't even part of the Order. This is," she shrugs uselessly, "for us."

Mother Superion's eyes do not raise from their task, but Lilith watches her reflection arch an eyebrow. "I'm afraid you are incorrect in that assumption, Sister Lilith. Mary is as integral to the Order as you or I." She sets aside the comb, retrieving the silver scissors, the same ones she always uses for Lilith. "Besides, I have already asked her."

Lilith tenses, brow furrowed, willing away the pout of displeasure that threatens to form. She slows her breathing and releases her jaw. After several clicks of the scissors, she quietly asks, "And she just accepted it?"

"Not initially. She also volunteered Camila," Mother Superion's lips quirk at the corner, her shears snipping expertly, finishing the her work. "Then she said she might cut herself on your cheekbones."

"What?" Lilith asks. The notion is preposterous, one she doesn't understand why Mary would voice to Mother Superion, or why Mother Superion would repeat. 

"It was most certainly a joke, Lilith," she says. She leans down, flipping the scissors in her grip so both of her hands can rest safely on Lilith's shoulders, until their faces are side by side. She gazes at her in the mirror. "You are a beautiful person with a beautiful heart and beautiful hair, and Mary will take care of it in my absence the way you deserve."

Lilith's body locks up, tense with a thousand feelings she's never known. Mother Superion has never touched her like this before, never spoken with words so candid and loving and encouraging. She didn't do this the first time Lilith stepped into the combat ring, or when they spoke of the trauma of Halo-Bearing. There was the distance of their institution, formality and rigidity, and Lilith feels the swell of her emotions building like a tea-kettle left on heat for too long. She bites her lower lip to keep it from quivering. 

Mother Superion squeezes her shoulders gently before releasing them, and collects her supplies. She closes the bedroom door with a final nod of her head, and that is the only goodbye that Lilith receives.

+++

No one likes her here. She always knew it.

But Cardinal Duretti simmers with power and dignity like a general or a king, and the honor that Lilith feels when he singles her out for a special mission lights a fire in her chest. She is honored to hold his focus, and wears his words _the proper Halo-Bearer_ like a badge on her vestments.

"We must get our house in order," he intones. "Track down the girl. Bring back the Halo."

He values her sacrifices; he names her worthy. And then, like a message from the Almighty, Lilith has a path to follow again, a clear goal and worthy cause, aimless no more. He illuminates his child in the shadows, the girl from the depths of the darkest pit, and sets her to noble work. Shannon was the sun and Mary is the moon, and Lilith is the empty void behind them, all-encompassing and lonely and vacuous. She can't even reflect the light they shine.

But they don't matter any more. The Halo will fill all her fractures with holy fire, and burn brightly enough to make up for what she lacks.

+++

"Hey, Ava."

Lilith catches up to her in the dirty alleys of ARQ-Tech's massive, sterile complex, a predator prowling the night. Ava is easy to find; she's terrified and loud, and the Sword in Lilith's hand calls out to her. Deep in her bones there is something savage that holds Shannon's Sword against its will. She clutches the hilt of it, this weapon that does not yet belong to her, like a hand wringing a throat.

"I only need part of you," she tells Ava, and watches her eyes widen. She is a beautiful woman, even when her face is peeled into a terrified mask. It wouldn't be murder, Lilith reasons, because Ava died once already, and everything after the moment the Halo touched her skin was just a bonus. She has broken Commandments before, but not tonight.

She bursts forward with explosive power, like a fencer, like a panther, like Shannon taught her, and shreds through the helpless skin of Ava's arm, the Cruciform Sword a comfortable weight in her hand. She should have lobbed off her head, but no, that's too inelegant, and Lilith likes to take her time and truly enjoy the acid drip of her swelling hatred.

_It's hatred_ , she convinces herself, glowing weapon in hand. _I hate her._

"Are we bonding now?" she spits and smiles, relishing how pretty Ava's face looks when she cries. This must be how Beatrice feels.

Ava is unworthy. She brought this on herself, and Lilith would watch her bleed to death slowly to protect the Halo. This is the burden Lilith bears: she is a cruel woman, and so is the thing inside of her, the machine with sharp angles and a perpetual motion engine. It will not let her rest, and Mary has always seen this sordid inertia clearly.

And then, as if summoned, Shotgun Mary stops the killing blow as easily as Mother Superion stayed Lilith's hand at practice weeks ago. They are always protecting this pitiful creature, this waste of their time, and a shriek surges in her throat at the sight of her. They break apart and reform, striking like a hammer on a gong, echoes of their clash resounding down the alley.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Mary screams.

And even as they fight Lilith thinks, _What a loaded question._

"Stay out of this, Mary."

The barrel of her gun points to Lilith's lips, but she rushes forward again, all arm locks and rolls. Even unarmed, Mary hits like a truck and she winces at the impact; and they are all wrapped in each other's violence until the ice-cold realization hits harder than either of them ever could: Ava has slipped away. They sweat and pant, the pressure fizzling out of them like helium from a child's balloon. Mary releases her with a shove, and Lilith staggers backwards, her palms scraping rough brick.

"You must be losing your god damned mind," Mary wipes the back of her mouth on her sleeve, all condescension and disappointment as she glares over the grey fabric. "You could have killed her."

"We _must_ retrieve the Halo," Lilith seethes. Mary turns away from her with a scoff, her long braids fanning out on her back, aqua and yellow under the distant neon lights. Lilith's voice raises, and she hates the feeble quiver that permeates every word, "She shouldn't have it. It belongs to the Order, where it can be kept safe, and taking it back is the right thing to do."

"Shut the fuck up, Lilith," Mary says without breaking her stride. "You wouldn't know the right thing if it hit you in the face."

And Lilith bites against the bridle of whatever convalescence of forces pull her toward Mary's retreating form, back into the streetlight and noise, her clammy fingers clenched around the Sword in silence.

+++

They search all night together, which does nothing to stifle their tempers. Mary has told her to _shut the fuck up_ no fewer than six times, and Lilith resigns herself to simmering fury, her jaw aching with unspoken words as they stalk around the Ferry Station.

Still, after everything, they're too late. In the pink dawn light they sprint to the edge of the pier, side by side, exhausted, and they see Ava on the ferry, flipping them off with a smile, and Lilith's hatred peaks tenfold, a violent spike through her chest. She turns her frenzied indignation to Mary, who merely asks, "What you looking at me for?" and Lilith deflates, lame again.

Mary places her hands on her hips like a statue of a Roman hero, gazing out over the choppy water and Ava's ferry. "What a bitch," she says.

A little laugh escapes Lilith's lips, unexpected and dainty like chiming bells, the same airy laugh that her mother so demurely hid behind a manicured hand, and she blushes ferociously at herself. It is the sound of warm relief and unanticipated joy: they are aligned, they agree, only on something asinine, but Mary smiles at her like a military rout, an unrelenting victory, and Lilith basks in her elegance and power for just a moment too long.

The thing beneath the floorboards reminds her that they have work to do, and that the danger-soaked thrumming of Lilith's heart can only be a sign of weakness that will be used against her. She is exhausted and worn thin, and her prey has thwarted them both, so she settles back into her present sorrows, repeating her usual prayer to Mary- _I hate her, she's nothing, a false idol_ \- and pushes down the sight of her perfect skin and beautiful, scarred knuckles. She swallows up her temptation like shattered glass.

Lilith clears her throat and Mary, still smiling, says, "Come on."

+++

The peaceful moment drowns and it's her own fault, as Lilith anticipated. She reaches out for Mary's shoulder, spinning her with sacrilegious certainty and declares, "You and I aren't finished." As if hardening her voice will make her words more true, or Mary will bow beneath the weight of them, conceding to her.

Mary slaps her hand away. Hard, like swatting at a fly. "Touch me again and we will be."

They bicker and bite, and Lilith lords her superiority again- her safety net: she _has_ to believe in something, in the Lamb of God and the power of his mercy, or else she is nothing, an empty creature who begs to be wrapped up in the light of a woman who doesn't even _believe_ in a higher power- and the real truth comes out while Mary straddles her motorcycle with practiced ease.

"I don't trust you. No, I don't even _like_ you," Mary says, and her stare bores into Lilith like an ice bath, shocking and debilitatingly cold.

Some retort pours out of Lilith, snapping, biting, a rabid creature spouting nonsense. It's a reflex, she knows, a defense mechanism she can't stop, but she goes a sickly green, jealous and forsaken, and she can only hear the broken record of Mary's words on loop in the front of her mind, the most devastating recitation and the only one that matters. She knew it all along.

Mary puts on her helmet- Lilith sees her own bared teeth in its reflection- and revs her engine with cocky self-assuredness. Lilith watches in frozen anguish as she drives away, breathing in her exhaust like perfume.

+++

"Don't make me put you down, Lily."

Mary's tenderness and pity, her _mocking_ superiority, are hot embers in Lilith's gut- that isn't her name; she doesn't have nicknames- and she thinks, _One day that sinful, pretty mouth of yours is going to get you in trouble, Mary._

But she bites her tongue and returns to Ava, to the Halo, and says, "You see something in her."

_Like you saw in Shannon_ , she withholds, the thought lingering like vinegar on the tip of her tongue.

They fight again, sweating in the morning sun, bombastic fury the only release Lilith will receive. She tried to convince her- God grant her mercy, she _tried_ \- but Mary threw the first punch and Lilith commits to throwing the last, her lips split and bloody, her ribs throbbing from the impact of the meanest right hook she's ever taken. Mary hits so hard Lilith gags, barely recovering enough to dodge and riposte before the next onslaught of her punches.

"You taught me to shoot. Remember?" her voice waivers again, so unsteady, shivering in every syllable.

That memory aches like the bruises blooming on her skin: both of Mary's hands around one her own, warm and encompassing, cheek-to-cheek as they aimed at the cheap paper targets in the courtyard. She wanted to teach her how to shoot, she said so, and Lilith couldn't refuse her a single thing, her complaints about the inelegance of firearms aside. Paper targets for shotguns were unnecessary, but Lilith wasn't ready for the clays, and Mary said it was fun to blow them into confetti.

She did whatever Mary wanted, even then. But in the corner of her eye she caught Shannon watching them, sweating from her own training, and she remembers the loud, fearful questions screaming over the noise of her pulse, _Will she be jealous? Will she be mad at Mary? Will she be disappointed in me?_

But Mary extended an arm, beckoning for her, and she succumbed, slipping in on Lilith's other side. Shannon smiled widely, pleased with what she saw, and took her left hand and Mary's other shotgun, mirroring her partner around the axis of Lilith's body. She felt that it was holy, the three of them together.

"On three," Shannon said quietly against the edge of Lilith's ear, ever the commander.

Mary and Shannon counted down together while Lilith remained breathless; they steadied her hands toward the target and she fired on their mark, using the last of her self-control to squeeze both triggers. Thunder boomed in her hands and she released an undignified yelp, and the women on either side of her collapsed in giddy laughter, shotguns pulled from her fingers and cradled safely in their arms.

She thought at first that they were deriding her, belittling her, but Shannon's fingers clutched her shoulder and Mary's hand looped around her waist and they smiled up at her from where they'd doubled over, and she thought it would be all right if they _were_ making fun of her frightened squeak, maybe just a little, because in that moment her whole body was electrified.

Mary chuckled, stooping to pick up her used shotgun shell. She held up the red and gold cylinder to glint in the sunlight, proud and sentimental, and said, "Well, look at that."

And Shannon smirked, eyeing the destroyed bullseye. "That was wonderful, Lilith."

Their eyes on her face were too much for her and she ignited like dry ground before a wildfire, the angles of her body burning down to ash, and she felt softer and fresher and greener like there was rich soil beneath her with so much room to grow.

"Beginner's luck," Mary challenged.

She flared with heat, even then- always for Mary and her provocations, her _dares_ \- but they breathed smiles into her skin, and warmth filled her stomach and dripped low down her body, and she whispered deep in her throat, as vulnerable as she'd ever been, "I might need your help again."

"Any time," said Mary, and Lilith believed her. She bit her lip, still aflame and reeling, and they reloaded and raised both her arms to take aim again like she was their favorite doll.

But Mary snaps her back to reality, her tone staccato-sharp, punctuated with betrayal. They are bleeding on the pier and Shannon is dead now.

"And you know when we stopped being friends?" she hisses. "When Shannon got the Halo and you didn't. You changed that day."

It's easy to push her warmth beneath the surface when Mary scorns her so brutally; it's easy when Mary throws the first punch. She has never liked her and admitted as much. Lilith moans, "You _know_ I didn't have a choice."

They clash together like blood-spattered cymbals, but Mary doesn't wait for her to sting again. She tosses Lilith into the ice cold harbor and walks away without a backward glance.

+++

The ferry is crowded but Lilith passes the travelers with the same attention she pays to the backgrounds in paintings, which is less than none. She actively ignores them. How can she care about the angels, the lesser gods, her attendants, when Venus is so close, staring at her, drawing her closer? Botticelli was right to make her the centerpiece, her body the only heavenly raiment she would ever need, the source of Lilith's tunnel vision.

Mary is so close. She can feel her, scouring the decks for Ava and the Halo. Lilith followed her on board, her clothes still damp and dripping, goosebumps raising her flesh in the air conditioning. She waits around a corner, hidden in shadows, shaking with the cold and anticipation. Then, Mary fills her vision and she loses all sense of honor; she feels only the degradation of her words and the saltwater on her tongue.

She pounces and sucker-punches Mary like a coward, right in the jaw. Her soft lips split and Lilith feels warm blood seeping between the valleys of her knuckles and she rushes forward for more, unfulfilled from the appetizer. They break the door to the women's restroom, shattering a mirror and dislodging a sink as they wrestle and scream. Mary is still trying to reason with her, as if there's any chance of her changing her mind after what she said- _I don't trust you. No, I don't even like you._ \- and it all makes her want to weep like she did in Bois de Boulogne that summer for poor, misguided Brutus.

Mary headbutts her so hard she goes numb; she can barely feels her face. But she hopes through the pain that it ruins Mary's face too- she wants to choke her, and rip her pretty smile to shreds so she never has to look at it again- but she still fights and Lilith is losing, so she unleashes her poison the only way she knows how.

"Just because you let Shannon die doesn't mean you have to keep trying to save this one."

And for a moment it almost wounds her how Mary's face contorts, and Lilith feels for one millisecond the base temptation to fall to her knees and beat her chest and apologize for everything she's ever done. But the moment passes and she smiles instead, drinking up her own toxins.

Mary rams her into a stall and they crash down like meteors falling to earth, face-to-face, wrapped up in each other's savagery.

"I don't trust you," Lilith throws back Mary's words, ready to unseat her with their power. But then, like always, Mary does something unpredictable and wild, and her sharp canines sink into Lilith's forearm and they both scream until their throats are raw.

The handcuffs snap closed around the metal handicap bar and Lilith stares, wide-eyed and panting. Routed, trapped, ashamed. She strains against her binding, prepared to break her own wrist for freedom. Mary watches her struggle for a moment, a smile on her bleeding lips.

"I didn't think you would," she says. Her own poison is far more potent.

+++

She heaves and groans against the metal bar, the handcuffs digging a tidy crescent into the soft skin of her wrist, until with one last gratifying _pop_ she rips its cheap screws from the bathroom wall and flings herself backwards out of the stall. The handcuffs jangle uselessly against her thigh as she staggers through the broken glass and cracked tiles, panting and bleeding, shocked by the mess she and Mary made now that she's come down from the high of their fight.

A tired, middle-aged woman in a cat sweater stands in the doorway, staring at her with a horrified expression.

"It's closed for maintenance," Lilith coughs. Blood drips out of her nose.

"Okay," says the woman, shrinking as Lilith pushes past her.

She strides through the ferry, ignoring the other travelers, her tunnel-vision refocused and honed. Mary stares down at her from the top of the tacky staircase, looking not at all surprised to see her, but disappointed nonetheless. She stands with content calm like she's the victor after all and they can both rest easy knowing that Ava will go back with _her_ , and the Halo will once again be Mary's-by-proxy, even though she wanted nothing to do with it in the first place and she isn't even a Sister of the Order.

Lilith bounds up the stairs. "Where's the girl?"

"Enough. Will you give her a minute?" Mary asks like it's not an order she would enforce with violence.

"You've gotten _soft_ ," Lilith sneers.

"And you've gotten obsessed."

Lilith's heart pounds, hard and heavy, and she hates that under different circumstances Mary would almost look amused with her, brown eyes flitting about Lilith's bloody face like she's surprised she didn't bothered to clean herself, and Lilith hates herself for wanting to preen for that little bit of attention. Instead she thrusts her bloody wrist forward, holding out the handcuffs and interrupting the path of Mary's eyes.

"And you wonder every day why you never got the Halo," Mary mutters. Lilith rolls her eyes and looks at the wall; she can't face her when her words crawl upon her skin and blanket every inch of her body. "It's eating at you, right?"

Lilith turns away the second she's free of the handcuffs, but Mary clutches her injured wrist, tighter and less yielding than any metal. "You are a better warrior than Shannon ever was. You are faster, stronger, smarter. But you're no leader. Shannon was because she had _heart_. You don't."

Lilith searches her face, her lips, her pulse. Her words sink into her slowly, disjointedly, like she's translating the _Divine Comedy_ from English to Hebrew to Italian and something is lost along the way, but she knows she feels like a coward deep in her bones. She isn't certain where she's drawn the line of overestimating her own worth and underestimating Mary's, but she's quite certain that she's lost everything and it pulls at her like the vacuum of space, cold and relentless, and Mary is right: she doesn't have a heart.

Lilith pushed it underwater a long time ago and watched empty-eyed as it drowned, waterlogged and bloodless and abandoned. She tossed her heart away as easily as Mary threw her in the harbor.

"Just give her a chance to choose." Mary's voice softens, "You know what it's like to not have a choice. She's not going anywhere."

Lilith worries her bloody lip and iron coats her tongue. She's never spoken to her like this before, and it tingles against the back of her neck like shame or her daydreams about things that shouldn't occupy the thoughts of a holy woman. She realizes in that moment that this is the cruelest thing Mary has ever done to her: this is the thing that hurts the most, and her throat constricts like she wants to choke and die right there, anything to be free of Mary's mournful, invasive, knowing eyes.

_Did she do this to Shannon? Does Mary dismantle everyone brick by brick, or are my cornerstones the weakest?_

Shannon would never take a weak woman to bed. Mary is special- she can pull apart a church, down to its foundation, and rebuild it better than before, stronger and more beautiful and holier because her hands blessed the stonework- and as Lilith stares back at her with frightened, craven eyes, she knows exactly why Mary is afforded so many exceptions and broken molds: she deserves it.

"She'll be back if she- " Mary's gaze catches something on the lower deck, and Lilith's heart skips like she's been jolted awake. "God damn it, Ava!"

Ava and the boy sprint through the terminal and Mary takes off like a greyhound at the racetrack. Lilith follows, bursting down the stairs side-by-side until she takes the lead, her longer legs a powerful advantage. _You could have been a track star_ , Mary told her once during training, pouring sweat and smiling, and she rips apart the thought, unwilling to be distracted again, even by the sound of Mary's voice in her head.

And then, by blessed fate, Mary is stopped by terminal security, so Lilith is free to pursue alone.

+++

They're slow, undisciplined, Ava and the boy. It's only a matter of time.

She catches them in a garage or a warehouse or something- she knows and cares nothing about cars, though she watched Mary change the oil in the van once and grew suddenly interested in the mechanics and the process and the shimmery slickness on her fingers- but realizes with a scowl that _of course_ Ava has a twinky little boyfriend who tries to defend her like she's some damsel in distress. Lilith punches him once in the face and he drops like a sack of potatoes.

Then Ava hits her, _hard_ , untrained and unexpected. It hurts more than she anticipated, but she still snarks, "Look at you. You were paying attention after all."

But she trounces her, one quick leg sweep, and it's like child's play compared to her fight with Mary. She climbs onto her back- Ava is so small, so easy to dominate- and tries to explain her purpose, hissing into her ear. She tries to explain that Ava has a _duty_ to protect the people of this Earth from those that would do them harm. But it's clear as she struggles against Lilith that Ava doesn't understand, doesn't appreciate it, and rage fountains up inside of her.

So Lilith pulls her dagger from its sheath and plunges the blade deep into her back, the way a coward would. 

Carving the Halo out of her spine is harder than she thought, uglier, more gruesome, and she flinches against the resistance. The Divinium glows blue beside the scalding orange of the Halo and Lilith thinks it looks the way Shannon's body looked on that altar, dying and limp and hopeless, except there's no Mary here to reassure Ava, to offer her a kiss and one more glimpse of beauty before she dies.

_Did Brutus' blade hit bone?_ she wonders. She drowns the thought and digs deeper, her focus muting even Ava's loudest shrieks. She thinks that she has it far worse than Brutus ever did; he didn't have to carve something out with his knife, he didn't have to do it alone, he didn't know his heart was missing-

"Enough!"

Mary screams and bull-rushes her, the impact of their bodies colliding a familiar pain, and she rips Lilith from her task. Mary stops her like she always does, and reaches out to reassure Ava, who scrambles away, weeping and cursing. Mary turns back to Lilith, disgusted with the creature that's finally crawled up from the depths and shown its true colors, the one she always knew was there, awash in envious, sickly green.

_It's all right,_ Lilith wants to whisper. _I can carry this sin for both of us. You knew this was me._

She doesn't speak these things but she means it with whatever is left of her heart, the imprint of it, the space left behind. Lilith can shoulder these loathsome, violent burdens; she can swallow hot coals and throw away storybooks and accept her nature because this is what must be done, and Mary deserves better.

The air ripples with heat around them, a crackling growl summoned by the Halo's power, familiar and terrifying, and Lilith breathes, "Mary."

The Tarask corporealizes, all horns and hellfire, and backhands Mary like a ragdoll into a car fifty feet away. She smashes into the windshield, broken and groaning, and the gnawing wrongness of that visual creeps down Lilith's spine: Mary should not be thrown, Mary is strong, Mary is not a doll to be used and tossed aside, Mary is not like Lilith.

"I'll protect you!" Ava screams to the boy, throwing herself between him and the monster that would eviscerate them both in an instant.

_How can she protect anyone, the helpless girl?_ Lilith thinks. _She can't even protect herself._ But something like pride swells in her anyway when Ava uses what little power she has, and Lilith wonders if maybe she did understand all along. Maybe Mary with her knowing, watchful eyes saw it from the start.

The Tarask reeks of brimstone, its sword raised to strike the little, defenseless Halo-Bearer. Lilith knows at once what she must do. It sits in her missing heart, comfortable and assured, even more certain than she was of Cardinal Duretti's crusade. Mary is up and shooting at the abomination- she never fails, she always rises- but she deserves better than to watch Ava be cut down like Shannon, another pretty, dead girl she cares far too much about.

Lilith rushes forward, the Cruciform Sword guiding her as Mary screams her name, and pain erupts in her body like she's never experienced before. The fiery blade impales her, burning through her core, perverse and penetrating, and she screams, animalistic, her arms outstretched in agony as she drops the Sword.

_Pick it up, Ava,_ her dying mind thinks. Her organs cauterize on the blade, hoisted into the air like a puppet. _Is this what I did to you?_

The last things Lilith sees are Ava Silva's terrified face, and Mary screaming from across the garage, furious and helpless and raw, as beautiful as she's ever been. When she is pulled through to the other side, it is not at all what she expected when she sacrificed her life. She looks back at Mary one more time before she is falling for ever and ever to the place where all the traitors reside, crossed out unequivocally, as if she never existed at all.

_"Et tu, Brute,"_ was not a question, but a curse.

+++

She is empty so they filled her up- it filled her up, _something_ filled her up- with hot starlight. She has no say in this, no choice, no voice to raise dissent. It's inside of her: the plasma of a supernova. It makes everything in the void around it cease to exist when it implodes: it condenses the light a single point of nothingness, it drowns out the last drop of darkness. The cosmic cycle of Genesis begins again.

It's time to implode now. It's time to be reborn.

+++

She is not what she once was. When her consciousness returns she contains multitudes. There is light all around her and inside her and she can feel strings and waves of it converge along her scalp, her fingertips, her navel, and then they pull apart, sparkling and unnatural, and she is not the same as before. It burns and pushes against the tissues in her body, pulsing against her skin like it wants to escape.

She falls out of the portal the first time by accident; disoriented and alone but certain she has become the growling thing she fears. Her machine has been melted down and replaced, reforged into something stronger, more merciless. She doesn't know where she is or where she came from, if she came from anywhere at all.

But she _wants_ something, a place in her memory, and then it appears before her. And this she cannot parse: she has _wanted_ all her life and never received the things she craved, not until she died and was taken and became something else that still flows inside her. It doesn't hurt, but the promise of its strength frightens and exhausts her.

Her weak body rests in the dry grass of Bois de Boulogne, flat on her back, and she tilts her chin up, blinking hazily at the stage. It's upside-down in her vision and less beautiful than she remembers, more decrepit with the dead autumn leaves all around and no girls in summer dresses to give it life.

_This is right_ , she thinks. She has always liked tragedies the most. They seem truer to form. 

+++

The brick entryway of the Cat's Cradle is empty. Lilith haunts the grounds, searching for her Sisters in their quiet home.

That's what she wanted, _home_ , and she appeared here through another chittering, orange portal. She can control it on some level, as much as one can control the memories that resurface before sleep, jarring and disjointed. She doesn't know what she's looking for, but it's something important to the thing inside of her. She wanders the grounds, pondering the thing sharing her body, and takes in the little shocks around her one by one: the Cat's Cradle is not empty, but full of nuns who were denied the their vows. The women here are not of her Order. They are not her Sisters, but rejects. Worry bubbles up through the thick smog of her exhaustion, and she keeps to the shadows, low and silent.

She slinks near the portrait of Areala, where she watched Mary in the moonlight, and heat ripples through her again like a fever. It's within and around and all-encompassing, and she marvels at this thing in her, the Tarask, maybe, or something else. It doesn't hurt her, and seems content to let her explore, to let her search. It's easier to avoid the rejects in the halls- they don't know this place like she does- so she creeps about, hoping for a familiar face.

Suddenly Lilith stares back at herself, her own portrait, surrounded by candles the same way they did for Shannon.

There are little pictures and mementos littered on her funeral altar, things she'd forgotten that others hadn't: a single Scottish nettle, dried and faded; the smudged newspaper comics she used to wrap a teacup last Christmas; a pair of silver scissors used only on her hair; the red and gold casing of her first shotgun shell, slipped into a grey coat pocket when she wasn't looking.

The heat resurfaces, perhaps it was hers all along, and her lips part as she breathes deeply of the dust and dried flowers.

There are photos too, more than she anticipated, and her fingertips graze along the edge of one from last summer. She and Beatrice had been sparring in the noonday sun, increasingly lazy about their form, until Shannon had finally called for a break. But Beatrice, in a rare display of playful immaturity, kicked at her calves, poking her with her toes. Lilith poked back, then Mary joined her to even the odds, until finally Beatrice retreated, rolling away from them on the warm stone, giggling through her defeat. Camila took the picture with Shannon smiling over her shoulder, sharing the lens viewer, and captured a the moment of Lilith leaning into Mary, both of them laughing loudly, far more loudly than she remembers.

It was before Shannon received the Halo. They all look happy.

Her fingers longingly trail along these tributes from the women she betrayed, but her prayer of penitence is interrupted by a lightning strike; her head splits down the center, a frequency pitching higher and higher behind her eyes, a rubber band squeezing her head. She staggers with nausea and the exertion of standing upright, white-knuckling the tiled altar. Visions swim in her mind like memories: _ARQ-Tech, Salvius, Divinium, the Halo, the Halo, the Halo._

An unfamiliar voice, a reject, calls out and anxiety shoots through her heart. She has only enough time to stuff the photo into the pocket of her robe before she slips back to the shadows, sick to her stomach.

+++

She walks this time, half-limping through the cobblestone alleys to the asphalt-paved business district. Tourists and business owners on the busy streets watch her pass with open curiousity, but her mind wanders to more important subjects. She doesn't care about them, and neither does the thing inside of her, the thing she always was, a burning, tunnel-visioned monster with envy in heart and stinger full of poison. 

Her body aches with something unknowable and ancient but the fire burns hot and she knows she must find the Halo. She knows too that the other method- the portal, the jumping, the ripping of space and time like a wormhole- drains her, and she's not certain how long she can sustain it. But she wants to find her Sisters, even Ava, _especially_ Ava, and the creature nudges her toward the Halo in a biblical game of hot and cold.

Mary's room at the Cat's Cradle was empty, but it nearly always was. She slept in Shannon's room most of the time. And Shannon's room, _Ava's_ room now, was brutalized. Blood and metal shot from one of Mary's guns scattered across the stone floor and the shutters were blown off their hinges. Fear gripped her heart but the thing said, _No bodies, no Halo,_ and she was calmed.

Mother Superion's room was empty too; she must have gone onto Rome after all, perhaps shortly after Lilith's funeral. She wonders if she shed a tear for her before she left, maybe at the funeral; if Camila played and sang for them in her sweet soprano it would be difficult not to cry.

_But, no_ , Lilith thinks. _She would not betray that weakness for the other Sisters to see. She would be strong for her girls._

She would wait until she was alone, and maybe weep a little into the porcelain bowl she used to wash Lilith's hair. This is the thought she's entertaining as she heaves herself up to the front desk of ARQ-Tech, glossy eyed and frazzled. The Halo is above her, moving slightly, she can feel it like a magnetic pull against her senses. It blacks out the edges of her vision, toeing the brink of collapse.

She stares at the security guard, a mustachioed man whose mouth is open with disgust or concern- she struggles to read people now, even more than usual- and says, "Bring me to the other nuns."

"Ma'am," he says, reaching for an emergency button below the desk, "I don't-"

"Never mind," she scowls, cracking the dried blood on her forehead. A gaping portal, hissing and aflame, opens behind her and swallows her up from the sterile entryway. The energy drains from her body like water from a sieve, but the Halo is so close she can taste the sulphur and sweetness of it; its power is being used and it shines like starlight in her eyes, and she staggers forward through a swinging door.

Jillian Salvius and her Sisters kneel on the floor around Ava, staring up at Lilith's unsteady body, aghast- _all except Mary,_ _where is Mary?-_ and she chokes out, "Ava?" before she hits the ground.

+++

"You're dehydrated," says Salvius, and Lilith does not respond to this, though some part of her thinks it is a tremendous understatement given that she's fairly certain her body was incinerated and rebuilt atom by atom from the Tarask's unholy ash. It's hard to say either way; her memories are jumbled and not entirely her own. She was impaled, then there is a bright, yawning gap, then she returned. She is fairly certain that she died, at least partially, whatever that means.

But even now, she is not like Shannon with her nobility, her self-sacrifice, and her poorly-hidden deathwish. Shannon was always a better person. Lilith is not like her; she is a coward, a knife in the back. She did not want to die, she _does_ not want to die. Not after brushing the surface of the lake that the Tarask dipped her in, though the water was warm, not like the frigid Cocytus in Dante's Ninth Circle, but temperate and welcoming and so full of light. Perhaps that is the Devil's ploy to keep her: comfort, when life has given her none.

Maybe she did die all the way. She felt reborn, a wriggling, scorching new life inside of her.

Salvius leaves her to Camila and Beatrice, who stand around her hospital bed in various states of distress. Finally, Camila breaks, "How is this even possible? We had a funeral for her."

"Why does everyone think I'm dead?"

Beatrice, "What's the last thing you remember?"

Her mind flashes with fear and vague concepts, nothing complete, like a sketch of a Botticelli that hints at the truth of the full painting. An immaculate conception, an antichrist, a blinding overlay on her mind and soul that can't quite fit into her body, splitting at the seams. _It's angelic_ , she thinks. _Lucifer was angelic too._

"I was in the warehouse," she says. "With Mary. We tried to get to Ava but the Tarask appeared."

This is a lie, of course, an omission at least. She isn't ready for her full confession, not with them; she trusts them to know her sins, but she hasn't spoken to Ava and the Halo-Bearer is owed her apology first. "And then, I must've blacked out. The next thing I remember I was in the Cat's Cradle."

Beatrice comes closer, softly stroking her temple, her hair. The contact makes her want to lean into her palm and shiver, but the pity in her eyes drives her away; she wants to find the Halo or Mary. Instead she glares at Camila, who fidgets before her, an awful secret-keeper. "You know something." She orders, "Speak."

"Mary said that the Tarask grabbed you." Camila, sweet Camila, has tears in her eyes. She shakes and says, "Like, it put its claws through you. She said it dragged you back into-"

"We thought you were lost," Beatrice interrupts her, eyes low.

Lilith breathes deeply. She doesn't remember everything, but she feels her wound, her blackened flesh. She recalls the unearthly, high-pitched tone in her brain, and raises her hospital shirt for them to see. The burn from the Tarask's blade, its lance, scars a perfect circle onto her body, a solid, misplaced Halo of her own.

Camila makes the sign of the Cross, kissing her knuckles, and whispers, "God granted you another life."

Lilith thinks for a moment that this isn't true- she doesn't know if it was God or Satan or something else outside of her control, and she is torn by this back and forth of good and evil, by the grey bits of both- but she knows her mind isn't right. She thinks there is something ugly inside of her that's always been there, and now the brimstone scent is unmistakable, her sorrow permanent, the unbecoming of the fated Halo-Bearer. She is a green-eyed beast, treacherous and heartless, from the Ninth Circle of Hell all along. The machine was only a placeholder, and now this thing inside of her has claimed its rightful throne.

Her thought is interrupted by another ringing migraine in her skull. She has wasted too much time. She lurches and gasps in pain, falling into Beatrice, and her Sisters wrap their arms around her. That would have meant so much to her once, a spark, a thrill, the _warmth_ of them. But now they are cool compared to her scorching, stretched flesh. The thing inside her expands and grows and it takes all of her energy to contain the fire of the supergiant star. 

+++

She breathes a sigh of relief that Ava is still alive. The noise and headache stop when she's near, as if the creature is satiated by her presence, but the relief is all Lilith's. She didn't expect it: she wanted her dead a few days ago, and stabbed her in the back when there weren't even other Senators to follow through with the predestined 22 remaining blows. There was only Lilith and her knife, and in this case, Caesar lived.

Her analogies fall apart the longer she thinks of them, twisted by time and circumstances, adorned with the heavy crown of whatever happened in the blank spots of her memory. She feels the weight of it, but does not have the full picture to give it form or substance. Perhaps it was for the best that she failed. The Republic of Rome fell shortly after the assassination, and gave way to the fickle madness of the Emperors.

But still, she asks for forgiveness from the only other person who knows how it feels to die. And tears well in her eyes when Ava is kind to her, though she certainly does not deserve it.

+++

She discovers that in times of extreme annoyance, Lilith and the hellish beast inside of her are very much alike. Camila plunks about on her iPad piano app, humming upbeat scales and half-constructed melodies, until finally she asks, "You're not going to be playing that all day, are you?"

Camila squirms under scrutiny, as per usual, but a wide smile breaks like daylight across her face. "I take requests."

"I request silence."

Camila ignores her, taking in her pallor and furrowed brow. "You look pale. How do you feel?"

"Like I've been to Hell and back." Camila doesn't laugh at her joke- though, in fairness, Lilith is not a funny woman- but reaches for her insulated bottle and pours the steaming liquid into a cup. The herbal fragrance swirls in the room as Lilith flatly adds, "Seriously, I'll be fine."

"My mother's from Inverness, in the Highlands," Camila says, as if Lilith hasn't heard this twenty times before. "Her remedies rank as follows: whisky, prayer, and sweet nettle tea."

She places the cup in Lilith's hands with a soft smile. The sweet nettle tea is disgustingly bitter, but she stomachs it and drains the whole thing because Camila would be sad otherwise. She lies to her too, reassures her, when she asks what will happen to their Order. This is Lilith's Cross to bear for the greater good: she can carry the sin for them, the deceit, the cruelty; she nearly told Mary so.

"We'll be fine," she says. "We'll figure it out. We always have."

But that is a difference between them: Mary would have seen through her lie at once, and would not offer another small smile or a placated nod. Still, Lilith reaches out to take her hand because Camila has always liked that sort of thing, but the ringing pierces through her sharply, severing all connections and filling her with pain.

"I'm fine," she gasps. "I'll be fine!"

And she staggers away from Camila, out of her ARQ-Tech hospital bed, her vision darkening again. Energy burns out of her, an exothermic reaction, and she stares at her terrified grimace in a mirror. The cuts on her face close, skin smooth and unscarred again, but she doubles over, lifting her shirt. She feels the muscles of her abdomen moving below the scab, cauterizing, regenerating, and when the blackened circle on her flesh peels away, only hellfire burns through her core, sizzling and zealous.

Strands of jet black hair turn silver before her eyes, and she shouts for Camila before rushing back to her room, uninjured but terrified.

+++

It hurts her very human pride that she's still in the hospital, mindlessly playing with her greying hair, needles stuck in her veins, while her team infiltrates the Vatican. Jillian Salvius is a pretty woman, competent and clever, whose determination reminds her a little bit of Mother Superion. But the similarities end there. She doesn't trust her in any capacity.

"But you're chilled," says Salvius. "I'd like to get you back on fluids."

Lilith squints at her. She's not even sure she's a medical doctor. "I was just waiting for my friends to get back. But I can wait somewhere else."

"Your friends left you in my care because they're worried about your health," Salvius says as she rests her hands on the side of the bed, and Lilith frowns at her. That _is_ nearly a direct quote from Beatrice, uttered just before she left the room early that morning. "Please, stay and rest. All right?"

Some man- Salvius' assistant, she assumes- interrupts them and, though they step out of her room into the well-lit hallway, Lilith hears, "Will you make sure she stays here?"

And she decides, then and there, that she is absolutely _not_ going to do that. She will not sit here, a useless lump for scientists to ogle, while her Sisters risk their lives. She and the creature inside her are aligned: there is something else here at ARQ-Tech, pulsing with ugly power, that she must investigate first.

+++

She slips out of her room and out of her thoughts like floating along a gentle current. It melds with her more easily now, the burning thing, the Tarask, and when she relaxes it relaxes too.

The claws are a surprise though, a hard, unpleasant shock, as her hand runs divots through the metal walls like a warm knife through butter. She blinks herself awake, clutching the wrist Mary once handcuffed, as if she knew something evil would grow out of her one day, blooming and deadly. But the Tarask holds such sway over her mind that it calms her nerves, a predator, hypnotic, the way she's always fancied herself. She relaxes and continues her march, unconcerned with the claws.

It draws her to a child, a boy, in the basement. There is something wrong with him, she knows at once.

"You're too late," he says.

She stares down at him imperiously, "How do you know?"

Jillian bursts into the room, protective and petrified, grasping for her son- so clearly her own blood- clutching him the same way Mother Superion would hold Lilith's shoulders.

"Mom," the boy whispers, "Ava's almost to the door."

"No. That can't happen!" Lilith heaves, the words spill from her lips. She barely controls the hunch of her body- she is not the same as she once was- and she vanishes. She doesn't mean to, the heat simply wells up and takes her, and her eyes reopen in a dark catacomb beneath the Holy City, focused on the Halo like a well-honed blade.

+++

She moves through the underbelly of the Vatican, a faded silhouette of herself, tattered and dim, and each reflection she passes mocks her with a face she doesn't know.

"Lilith?" asks Father Vincent. "What are you doing here?"

She snaps her head toward him, registering his presence beside Mother Superion, both with weapons in hand. They are like shadows to her, outlines of things she used to know, but she still feels her admiration, her love, in the darkest depths beneath the fire, and thinks, _We must respond. We must not be rude to Mother Superion._

"I have to find Ava," Lilith's voice says.

She is not the same as she once was. She has a singular mission now, and she has no time to rest. It drives her. It burns all the chaff away to reap its fated harvest.

The air around her moves and a threat bursts forward from a dark corridor behind her. The reject, Crimson, digs a knife to her throat, but Lilith feels no fear, no rush of adrenaline before battle, only annoyance at the waste of their time. She feels the nod of the creature in her chest, the growth of her claws, the stretch of her arm, then the burst of blood from Crimson's jugular spattering across her face like hot raindrops.

Fear and disgust spring up in Lilith- she sees Mother Superion gasp, pale and horror-stricken, her kind hands shaking- until the fire calms her again, discarding her useless emotions. She sinks in and out of its warmth until it fully consumes her, and she resumes her silent procession to the Halo.

+++

She feels Ava, the Halo-Bearer, before she sees her. Their voices carry through the catacombs, hers and Beatrice's, and Lilith's compulsion drives her forward, reaching out as if through a dream.

"Stop," she pulls Ava away from the heavy rock wall of Adriel's Tomb, then shoves her to the ground.

Ava sneers, "Seriously, this again?"

Lilith is stronger than before, and dimly registers that she's hurt Ava again. But her strength is not sustainable, the thing does not understand this. The vigor of her body drains away like the pigmentation of her hair, and her muscles quiver from overuse.

Beatrice stands between them, her hand steady on Lilith's sternum. She says, calm and level, "Lilith, you are jeopardizing the mission."

"She's jeopardizing us all!" The words are not her own, they fill her up and spill out, a cup overflowing, but the edge of panic belongs to Lilith.

Beatrice stares into her eyes, "She's not herself."

"Seems like the same old Lilith to me," spits Ava.

It speaks through her mouth again, "The Halo cannot enter Adriel's Tomb." Lilith knows this because the creature knows this. She knows this in her heart more than she has ever known another truth.

A familiar voice rings out: "Shouldn't you be in there by now?"

Mary shoulders her shotgun, the barrel pointed at Lilith's face. Her heart wants to skip a beat- _Mary, Mary, Mary_ \- but the thing won't let her lose control; it is steadfast and furious at another delay, another enemy that could never possibly understand.

_They know not what they do._

"Make me go through you to get to her," Lilith's voice snarls, a plague of locusts on her lips, "and you will not like the outcome."

Mary remains unimpressed, "I'll take my chances."

Lilith's body attacks, but it's two against one and she's _so_ tired, and she remembers the photo still in her pocket: she can't beat Beatrice without Mary's help, and Mary hits her even harder, smashing her ribcage. And then she is pinned, an animal caged, choked and straining against Mary's stronger arms.

"Don't make me shoot you, Lilith!" Ava pumps the shotgun.

"Ava, do _not_ shoot Lilith!" Mary screams, her voice hoarse and terrified, and all at once Lilith's sense of self-preservation resurfaces. She doesn't want to die, not like Shannon, not like her echo wrapped up in Mary's arms, another corpse for the Vatican's catacombs. Even the creature, starlight-bright, understands the permanence of a human's death.

"Lilith, come on," she whispers. "It's me. It's Mary."

"I know who you are." But still she thrashes, the Tarask in her thrashes, bound by its compulsion to remove the Halo. It should not be in the Tomb. The Halo does not _belong_ in the Tomb. Lilith's eyes dart around; she could claw Mary's throat out like she did Crimson. She could punish her. She doesn't; she can't. Instead she struggles helplessly, her arms pinned behind her.

"Yeah, I don't think you know who you are. So, let me remind you." Mary's words are in her ear, warmer and more comforting than the place the Tarask took her. Heaven or hell, she doesn't know, but she does knows that Mary's voice is better than either. "You are brave, you are loyal, and you are way more giving than you want anyone to know." Lilith's eyes widen, her lip quivering. She feels stripped bare and vulnerable, centuries older. "I have seen you put yourself into the path of pure evil to protect the rest of us. I have seen you lay down your life to keep your Sisters safe."

The creature staggers. Lilith is spent. Her voice is whimper, a pout, but it's all hers, "You called me heartless."

"And then you had to go and prove me wrong, hmm?" Mary holds her tight, not locked in a cage but embraced, supported. "I don't know what lies your mind is telling you, but you are Sister Lilith of the Order of the Cruciform Sword. You hear me? You hear me, my Sister? And I see you. I see you."

"I don't know what's happening to me, Mary," she pants, her knees buckling. "I'm losing my mind."

Mary holds her and whispers, "I've got you."

And they slide to the floor; Lilith's body slackens, tears dripping down her face. She holds Mary's hand against her cheek like a lifeline, and feels Mary's soft lips press to the edge of her hair, the color all ruined by whatever happened on the other side. But she hiccups and blushes, her shoulders shaking- it's the first time she's been kissed by anyone but her mother, and that was decades ago, and her body burns feverish in a way that's all her own- and she pulls herself harder against Mary's chest, clumsy and needy and too relieved to be embarrassed by her sobbing.

It's Lilith's first kiss and through her tears she decides that it counts because she planted these seeds and begged them to germinate, and she's almost certain she won't get another chance to press herself close to Mary like this. It's enough, this deliverance, and it fills her up, and it _counts_. She is smudged and paper-thin like old newspaper comics; she is invasive and out-of-place like Scottish thistle in a Spanish garden; she is untouched and solitary like silver scissors. She is an empty shotgun shell that Mary picked up and put into her pocket like it still mattered. 

Mary's lips are in her hair again, kissing her over and over, and her hands smooth it down like she's peeling off her veil. Lilith sobs and thinks that she should have just collapsed in Mary's arms the moment they met, purged and cleansed of her sins, and she's wasted so much time pretending to be strong when she never was.

She can smell the soft skin of her neck, the layers of salt and dust and something clean like soap. She breathes deeply of the scent, a balm, ambrosia, but she was never good at those sorts of descriptions: she hasn't drank enough wine, hasn't licked enough skin. She knows lists of perfume components and other romantic, flowery descriptions but only in theory, not in application, and they fall short of the prayer Mary deserves.

She cries hard, words choked in her throat. She wants nothing more than Mary's forgiveness, just enough to trust her to be alone in her quiet room, even if she can never fully atone. She's done too much for that.

Mary holds her head and her fingers lace up through Lilith's hair, and she wonders if maybe Mother Superion was right: she would wash and cut it for her, silver streaks and all, with thoughtful tenderness and care, just like she gave to Shannon. Lilith presses her lips to the inside of Mary's wrist like she should have so many times before, and she tastes the salt of her skin and the feels the hammer of her pulse, and her touch is desperate and deadly and dark like Mary's eyes and the hollow in Lilith's chest, but that's all that suits her now. She worships the latticework of their bodies, and the way Mary wipes away her tears with the pads of her thumbs as she presses one last kiss to her forehead, the final step in her beatification.

Beatrice turns away from them, barely breathing, her eyes fixed on the blue laser cross that marks the Tomb, waiting for Ava's return.

+++

Duretti is named the Holy Father. A week ago that would have sent chills up her spine, that he beheld her and spoke of his pride in her works. But the white smoke from the Sistine Chapel is nothing compared to the brimstone billowing in her gut, purified and devout, and she paces the dank catacomb, distracted.

"We need to get the Halo out of this place," she says. The thought is an itch beneath her skin, an existential addiction. The thing inside her feels different, _frightened_ almost, though she controls the claws that want to burst out through her fingertips.

_There is nothing to fight_ , she tells herself, she tells the claws. _Mary said so. Listen to Mary._

Her hands move of their own volition, ignoring her as they reach for the box of Beatrice's explosives. They will blow the Tomb to pieces before-

Mary clutches the box, her voice sad but firm. "You don't get to touch the dynamite. Not until we figure out what happened to you. Are we clear?"

"I'm trying to help," Lilith says. But Mary pulls the box of charges away from her gently, moving back, and Lilith thinks it's true: the thing is trying to help the same is she is, and Mary believes them both.

"I know," she says.

They set her to a new purpose: drilling a hole into hard rock until her hands are numb, a place to put the dynamite when the time is right, mindless work that somehow sates the beast's directive. Simple tasks and simple thoughts are easier for her to manage now.

_Thank you, Beatrice,_ she does not speak over the electric whirring. _Thank you, Mary._

+++

She turns back, back and back again, her steps stuttering and clumsy, to be sure Mary is following as they flee the Tomb. She won't leave her. The creature tasted her faith, and deemed her worthy. Lilith would rather die here, crushed beneath the marble columns of the Vatican, than leave Mary behind.

But Mary pushes her forward, "I'm all right. I'm okay." She presses so close to her that Lilith leans into her lips, intoxicated by her, the two of them coated in the crumbling dust of the Tomb, but Mary lays her palm above Lilith's breast, over her heart. "Keep going for me, Lilith. Okay?"

And Lilith would give her anything she wanted, anything at all. She would die for Mary. She would live for Mary.

"Okay," she breathes, and she keeps going.

+++

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Father Vincent told her once in the courtyard of the Cat's Cradle.

The traitor, Cain, _Judas_. She loathes him. She will not give him the title Brutus, he does not _deserve_ Brutus, he has never cared to do good, he was not misguided, this evil was done of his own volition. She burns with the beast inside her, the Tarask, the earth-eater, and when she swallows her fury it grows to twice its size.

_You serve Adriel the adversary_ , they think together, a caduceus intertwined. _The skin-wearer. Thief. You killed our Halo-Bearer. You took Shannon from me. You took her from Mary._

Her hair is streaked with white; her face is streaked with red. In her periphery she sees Mary stride forward with dogged determination, ready to kill or die trying, and she reaches out, clutching her. It is not the end, not _her_ end.

Lilith rests her hand heavily against Mary's arm, and murmurs, "I'll handle this."

_Let me carry this_ , she does not say. She and the creature inside her walk to the traitors, the liars, who desecrate the Holy City with their presences. Adriel flicks his wrist, flippant and dismissive as ever, but she burns with a protective portal, evaporating and reforming instantly, immune the devious tricks that would kill a mortal.

"You've been to the other side," Adriel says. His eyes survey her body and she longs to pluck them from his skull. "What are you?"

"Doesn't matter," she says, slowly sauntering toward him. Staying her hand, her claws, is torture, but she is the distraction now, and she must buy time. She was always good at lying to everyone but Mary. "But I know what you really are. Nothing but a _thief_."

His face peels back in demonic fury, a glimpse of his true form, and he strikes her _hard_ with profane, immeasurable power. She is flung backwards as the Tarask wraps itself around her body like a shell, like armor, but her heart stops midair, and when she lands on the ground she writhes in agony. Lilith ages decades all at once, like her very life drains from her broken body, but her smashed sternum re-stitches itself together. She blearily sees the tips of her hair, salt-and-pepper now, all of it, like her mother's before she dyed it black again. She is not the same as she once was.

Her hands shake when she rises to her feet again. But she knows her purpose, and she won't fail her Sisters. She joins their attack, weaponless but for her claws, drawing Adriel's attention. He cannot kill her as easily, not in one strike, not like he could Camila or Beatrice or Mary. She screams, slashing at his throat. She will carry this burden to fruition; this is her right and her rite: she will place herself in harm's way to spare the others, and she find solace in being their shield.

Adriel catches her by the throat, crushing her windpipe, and she is too weak to do anything but go limp in his grasp. She bleeds, content with herself and her attempt to atone. Her vision swims and she braces for her second death, her final death.

But then there is Mary, bashing against him in a violent frenzy- his elbow, his jaw, his knee- until finally he drops Lilith, gasping on her knees, a grotesque genuflection. Mary pulls her up again, always dragging her out of the abyss, back to the safety of her Sisters.

Together they bring Adriel to his knees, a temporary victory. When he rises again- and they knew he would, there is only so much they can do without the might of the Halo- a fog of orange haze surrounds him, an army of wraiths, and they know in an instant the terrible danger before their eyes.

+++

Mark Antony does forgive Brutus at the end of the play. Lilith thought at the time that this was very sentimental of him, and very stupid too. Brutus is a traitor, stuck under the surface of the ice-cold lake Cocytus, destined to freeze for an eternity in the Ninth Circle of Hell, where all the scorpions go.

Mary rushes forward to protect her Sisters, to find justice for Shannon and peace for herself. She dives into the sea of wraith-possessed bodies that surround them, and Lilith screams and weeps as she watches her sink below the surface of their tearing hands. A terror she has never known grips her heart- it's there, she _feels_ it, full and breaking with every beat at this new tragedy, worse than her own death- she is losing Mary.

Lilith reaches out, wild-eyed and wretched, her voice hoarse, frenzied. After everything she's done, all the sorrow she has wrought, it is Mary who drowns. Mary, who always deserved better. This is not what Lilith wants.

Brutus does not deserve to live. This is not how the story should end.

+++

> "Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage.
> 
> Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief."
> 
> -Euripides, _Grief Lessons: Four Plays_ , translated by Anne Carson 


End file.
